The ethnological and anthropological study of Bežanija at the start of the 21st century: The impact of urban development on boundaries and the perception of a neighbourhood

Abstract

Being one of the older settlements in the present-day City of Belgrade, more precisely the municipality of Novi Beograd, Bežanija is a place boasting rich historical, urban planning, and architectural features. Moreover, the ethnological and anthropological study of Bežanija expands the perspectives of this urban neighbourhood, attempting to examine the current social and cultural framework of its inhabitants. This paper is based on the architectural and anthropological research conducted in the form of mapping the studied area, observation, and informal interviews with residents. On the basis of the available material, the author endeavors to show that Bežanija is nowadays almost a marginalised city toponym, due to partly indeterminate and blurred boundaries cased by the specific urban development of Novi Beograd in (post)socialist era. One of the general findings is that the local identity of the population also follows the trend, which means that people's identifying with a place of residence is differently perceived by different generations depending on changes in the architecture of the neighbourhood.